When an industrial accident in Cloudsdale results in a massive release of construction-grade fog, the Weather Department calls upon its certified fog specialists to handle the disaster response. Sadly, none of the experienced specialists are available, so the job falls to Fluttershy, who has no experience and only earned the certification to get a tax write-off. Now, with the fog threatening Ponyville, she will have to step up to the task of supervising ponies...or face the wrath of the Equestrian Revenue Service.

It is complete.

Tropes:

Accidental Misnaming: Greg tends to do this, most often with Pencil Pusher. This includes narration when he's the character in focus at the time. When Luna refers to Pencil Pusher by name, Greg even thinks that she got it wrong.

Apologises a Lot: At one point Fluttershy spends thirty minutes apologizing to the mayor, then apologizes for apologizing so much.

Be Careful What You Wish For: In the epilogue, we learn that Greg's plan to be put in charge of the Personnel Department went off without a hitch. Unfortunately, without Pencil Pusher around for him to bully, he's faced with the horrifying prospect of actually having to do his job.

Dark Secret: Throughout the first part of the story Fluttershy's thoughts frequently imply that there is a problem with her fog certification. We eventually learn she took her courses in fog management from an unaccredited university and that she was using her fog specialist credentials to cheat on her taxes. Although as it turns out, she still honestly passed the Department of Weather's certification test and was actually just taking advantage of a legal tax incentive. Despite her fears, she is genuinely the most qualified fog expert available to deal with the current crisis.

Deuteragonist: Though Fluttershy is the focus, Pencil Pusher has been nearly as prominent.

Extremely Short Timespan: Based on the chapter titles, the entire story (minus the epilogue) takes place in slightly less than 72 hours.

Fog of Doom: The titular fog. It's a miles-wide sphere of cloud that simply can't be manipulated and will eventually set "solid". Plus, the interior of it is cold enough that prolonged exposure can freeze Earth Ponies to death. Since it's spread itself over a large area of farming country, it's become very disruptive and has to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible.

Four Lines, All Waiting: The initial A-plot is the fog. So far so good. Then more plots stat piling in, including Pencil Pusher's crush on Fluttershy (which spirals into a bizarre Love Dodecahedron), Bon Bon and Lyra's belief that humans are in the fog and their differing views on said humans obviously spiraling towards disaster, the CMC's own plot about human interaction gained from overhearing Lyra and Bon Bon that's obviously spiraling towards disaster, the internal politics of the Department of Weather and Greg's assholery (and if Greg'll ever get any true comeuppance), Fluttershy's tax problems (later resolved), and probably more. A couple of chapters have FOUR plots all running concurrently, with the fog plot being the one most delayed at the time.

Fun with Acronyms: The Society for the Prevention of Human Exploitation in the Realm of Equestria, or "SPHERE" for short. The name also conveniently uses Ambiguous Syntax to cover both situations in which humans are exploiting Equestria, and being exploited by Equestrians.

Gone Horribly Wrong: Caligo Manufacturing was working on a new industrial cloud formula, one that is much more resilient and almost impossible to disperse compared to normal clouds. It works so well, the tanks can't hold it and the whole mixture becomes a fog bank. The whole story circles around how plain hard it is to eliminate it by conventional means.

Bon Bon:: Lyra, even if the humans are friendly, which they won’t be, the fog is almost at Ponyville already. There’s no way to make all those preparations you’re talking about in time, unless you seriously think that several dozen new members are going to spontaneously appear in the next few hours.

(Pinkie Pie knocks on the door. Lyra answers.)

Pinkie Pie: Hi! Is this the meeting place for SPHERE?”

Lyra: Um... yes...

Pinkie: Oh, good! Say, would you guys be interested in getting several dozen new members in the next few hours?

Intimidating Revenue Service: The Equestrian Revenue Service, run and staffed by Princess Luna's Lunar Guard. The threat of investigation by them is what initially drives Fluttershy to work on the problem.

Kill It with Fire: Fluttershy's first plan to deal with the fog. Applejack specifically calls the plan this.

Laser-Guided Karma: While giving Applebloom and Scootaloo her What the Hell, Hero? speech over making Derpy sick, Sweetie Belle inadvertently sets off their human trap, resulting in the two unrepentant Crusaders getting caught in it.

Love Dodecahedron: Pencil Pusher has it bad for Fluttershy. Fluttershy has shown some minor signs that she might return his feelings. Rainbow Dash and Rarity have been indulging in Shipper on Deck meddling to get Fluttershy and Pencil Pusher together. Because of that meddling, they have accidentally convinced Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle that they (Rainbow Dash and Rarity) are also attracted to Pencil Pusher. Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle carelessly mentioned their mistaken belief in front of Spike, who now worries that Pencil Pusher is his competition for Rarity's affections.

Eventually subverted: The whole mess comes to an abrupt end when Pencil Pusher assures Spike that he doesn't fancy Rarity, and when Applejack tells Fluttershy about Pencil Pusher's feelings and about Rarity's and Rainbow Dash's meddling. It's amazing what a bit of direct and honest talk can accomplish.

Flywheel, the worker at Caligo Manufacturing who went to use the bathroom, asking the janitor to look over things while she was gone, and forgot that the special nature of this fog meant that the usual gauges were inaccurate. This led directly to the titular Fog of Doom being unleashed.

Bon-Bon, who was silly enough to make her paranoid rant about humans where the Cutie Mark Crusaders could hear. With their typical lack of foresight and overenthusiasm, the trio are now determined to catch the non-existent humans they think are hiding in the fog. The ramifications of this are quite obvious in advance.

No Antagonist: The main plot is a straight up disaster story. The closest thing the story has to an antagonist, Hard Hitter, turns out be a Red Herring when it's revealed that Fluttershy's Dark Secret only exists in her head. He goes off in search of bigger game.

Also, the unnamed claims adjusters at Caligo's insurance company, who insist that they withhold trade secrets related to the composition of the fog, or risk losing their industrial espionage coverage.

The Only One: Fluttershy would much rather have had another fog specialist deal with this, but there is a serious shortage of fog specialists and all the others are unavailable. So Fluttershy has got to do it.

Poor Communication Kills: The Cutie Mark Crusaders don't actually know that the fog is lethally dangerous to ponies—especially to foals their age— since nobody is willing to scare them by telling them the truth. Because of this, and because they don't want to get in trouble for listening to Bon-Bon's crackpot theories, nobody knows that the Cutie Mark Crusaders intend to go into the fog.

Hard Hitter's investigation into Fluttershy's credentials was a misdirection to hide the fact that Fluttershy's Dark Secret was all in her head.

The Love Dodecahedron between Pencil Pusher, Fluttershy, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Spike was merely an elaborate set-up to allow the Cutie-mark Crusaders to escape the party when Spike went in to talk to Pencil Pusher. The Love Dodecahedron fizzled out once its purpose was served.

Rube Goldberg Device: The Cutie Mark Crusaders' human trap, which turns out to be so complicated that Sweetie Belle realises too late that the trap is useless unless a human happens to stand still long enough to get caught in it, such as if they're too busy arguing with their friends to move around.

Shipper on Deck: Rarity eventually decides to help things along between Fluttershy and Pencil Pusher. Rainbow Dash, meanwhile, supports the idea as well, but thinks that Rarity is pushing too hard.

Shout-Out: Purple dragon Spike walks into the party to talk to Pencil Pusher, who briefly mistakenly calls Spike by the name of another purple dragon.

Start X to Stop X: After working so hard to keep the fog from consuming Ponyville, Fluttershy's plan ultimately involves deliberately letting the fog pass through Ponyville into the Everfree so that, ideally, the forest's wild magic will cause it to dissipate.

Terse Talker: Greg speaks this way in order to sound authoritative and intimidating. It seems to be effective enough to obscure his overall incompetence to most ponies. (Unfortunately for him, Princess Luna is not most ponies, and she calls him out on it.)

Mayor Mare: Elected officials can’t afford to apologize for their opinions. Not if we want to be reelected, at least. They create openings for accusations of being wishy-washy.

Pinkie Pie: But I thought Wishy Washy just got elected to Parliament last year.

Mayor Mare: (groans) Don’t remind me.

Unusual Chapter Numbers: The title of each chapter indicates the date and time at which its action begins. Some of them are only separated by a few minutes.

We ARE Struggling Together: Since the day it was founded, SPHERE has been divided between Lyra's faction, who think that humans will be wonderful beings that need to be protected from Equestrian exploitation, and Bon-Bon's faction, who think that humans will be terrible monsters that will try to exploit Equestria. When it was just the two of them, it just led to constant arguments. Now that more ponies are starting to actually consider the two's claims seriously, the approaching factionalism is quite obvious.

What the Hell, Hero?: Sweetie Belle gives her two fellow Crusaders this in regards to giving Derpy an ipecac-laced muffin so that they could escape the party to check on their human trap.

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